Story and photo by Mike BlainThe Free Press
From the front of his office - an open-air shed packed full of construction bric-a-brac with a worn but functional metal desk nestled in one corner - Roy Hunter can survey his domain. A sea of toilets, tubs and sinks sit off to the right; an army of doors, cabinets and windows lie straight ahead; mountains of lumber of all sizes and shapes rise off to the left. Hunter owns and operates Second Use Building Materials, a construction salvage and retail business he started last year and runs out of a moderate sized commercial yard in Woodinville, Wash. If he ever says he'll throw everything but the kitchen sink into a deal, that wouldn't leave out much.
A carpenter and remodel contractor by trade, Hunter says he became increasingly disturbed by the tremendous waste he saw week after week in his field, especially on higher-end remodel jobs. "It is just incredible what they throw away out there," he says, referring specifically to numerous projects he was involved with on Mercer Island. "They just tear down a perfectly good house and then build it again."
After attending a conference on environmentalism in the construction trades in Seattle a couple of years ago, Hunter came up with the idea to start a business salvaging and re-selling building materials. He rescued his first load of lumber from a Fred Meyer that was demolished in late 1994, and went on to sell over $4,000 worth of used lumber in his first month of business.
Selling dimensional lumber at about two-thirds what new lumber costs, Hunter manages to make a modest profit while also offering his customers substantial savings. The larger the dimensions of the lumber, the greater the savings. While Hunter currently sells an 8-foot 2X4 for $1.50, compared to $2.43 at Eagle Hardware, an 8-foot 2X12 goes for just $7.92 at Second Use, compared to $10.98 at Eagle. And he is more than willing to haggle over price.
Savings on non-lumber items can be even greater. Like-new fiberglass bathtubs, which start at about $200 in most retail outlets, go for as little as $99 at Second Use.
On a recent Saturday, Hunter was helping two women to load up several hundred square feet of oak flooring that had once graced an aerobics room in a health club that went out of business. "We aren't buying new floors," Gwen Healy said defiantly, "so we didn't even look." She says her top priority in shopping for flooring for her home in Seattle was to find quality used material and avoid contributing to the demand for new wood. She says once the wood is installed, sanded and refinished, it will look like a new oak floor for about half the cost.
Leslie Ross, a 37-year-old Seattle resident who worked for many years as a carpenter in New York City, has taken things several steps further. She is building a small house for her mother in Quilcene, on the Olympic Peninsula, and is using recycled materials whenever possible during construction. "I dreamed about doing this for a long time," she says.
Ross has bought 2X4s, floor joists, rafters, windows, and doors - among other things - from Second Use, and estimates she has already saved at least $5,000 dollars. Although she had to purchase new plywood to build concrete forms for the basement, she reused the plywood as subflooring. "It's a very low-budget production," she says, noting that her finances dictate that putting up exterior siding will have to wait until next summer.
Roy Hunter says his job can be an "organizational nightmare."
Both Hunter and Ross point out that older wood is often of much higher quality than newer lumber, which is grown quickly and more prone to warp or twist as it dries. Ross said she researched local building codes before initiating construction and determined that as long as she had a timber grader assess all the wood she was going to be using for the house she shouldn't encounter any problems pertaining to the quality of the lumber at inspection time.
"It requires a lot more work on the part of the builder if you are using recycled materials," says Ross, referring to time spent searching for the right materials and having a timber grader come out to the property.
Before Second Use opened for business, she adds, "there was nobody around that was doing what he is doing." In fact, you can still probably count the number of businesses selling recycled building materials in the Northwest on one hand. The Re Store, which opened in Bellingham in 1993 and received some grant money from the state Department of Ecology, sells used windows, doors, cabinets, lumber and plumbing and electrical supplies out of its 9,000-square-foot store.
Several businesses in the Seattle area salvage and re-sell high-end and antique building materials, such as stained-glass windows, intricate ironwork etc. But none of them really cater to do-it-yourselfers on a limited budget. "(Second Use) is not appealing to a yuppie clientele," says Ross.
As more people become aware of the high quality and cheap prices of many recycled building materials, Hunter says he hopes growing sales will enable him to move to a larger commercial space and offer even more variety to his customers. He cites Urban Ore, a similar business located in Berkeley, Calif., which does over $1 million in sales each year, as an example of the potential for a well-run building salvage and retail business.
Hunter gets many of his materials for free simply by agreeing to remove them from buildings slated for demolition. He says, however, that his interactions with demolition contractors have largely been disappointing. "They like to take down a building in a day's time" he explains. Even though they can save money in hauling costs and demolition labor by having Second Use come through first, he says, most of the contractors simply refuse to schedule two or three days for salvaging.
Still, Hunter has found enough sources of material to keep himself and four employees busy. Despite Second Use's success, however, Hunter says he isn't making much money, probably less than what he was making as a carpenter. But he says he didn't decide to salvage tossed-aside toilets, adopt orphaned sinks and pull thousands of nails out of 2X4s finds because he thought he'd make a killing. "I'm an environmentalist from way back," he explains. "There's just so much stuff that could be saved out there."
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Contents on this page were published in the August/September, 1995 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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